I have been considering various options for sending greeting to family and friends for the Christmas and New Year. In the past, we ordered paper cards customized with our own photos using iPhoto on a Mac. The quality was excellent for the price. Also, I like to believe that there is something special about a handwritten card that arrives in the mail. Unfortunately, I am almost always late with ordering the cards and then sending them out. This, combined with uncertain snail mail delivery times for some overseas destinations, often caused us to miss the actual holidays, which somewhat defeats the purpose of the holiday cards.
This year, I am considering a fully electronic alternative to traditional, handwritten paper cards, but I still want to convey the personal attention and avoid a cookie-cutter look.
Broadly, there are three options:
- Printed cards. There are several online printing companies that would accept a custom-designed card, print it and ship directly to the address specified by you. One example is Holiday Cards by Sincerely Ink. For me, the drawback of this option that the greeting would not be written by hand and thus would lack the personal feel.
- E-cards. There are many options for creating custom e-cards either on an iPad/iPhone or on a Mac (naturally, there are counterparts for Android and Windows machines). I have tried the eCard Express, and was a bit disappointed by the lack of customizable fonts and very few templates that accept your own photos.
- Fancy emails. This seems to be the most promising option. In OS X, the built-in email client, Mail, has an option of using custom stationery (accessed by pressing the button at the top right of the message window.) Several companies offer stationary sets that include greeting cards. For example, Equinux has stationary sets that cost between $8 and $15, which is substantially cheaper than printing and sending traditional paper cards. Finally, this page gives a comparison of greeting card software for Mac, with Hallmark Card Studio for Mac
being the top pick.
Upon considering these options, I am leaning towards creating the card from scratch in Photoshop
, since it has higher resolution than a 
. The higher framing rate of the 1D X offer no advantage in this case, since the motion will be frozen by the flashes.
, but a 
might be a better option for shooting from greater distance.
lens in it too. I 
that day, so I used it to shoot the portraits of my daughter and wife in our kitchen using natural light from a skylight located directly above them. I shot wide open, at f/1.2, which gives such a shallow depth of field, that the typical kitchen clutter in the background is not very distracting. The wide aperture also lets in a lot of light, which allows the ISO (and therefore, noise) remain relatively low.
is not a substitute for a 
for long exposure shots. It enables only slightly slower shutter speeds than what can be managed by hand-holding the camera. However, there are certain situations where using a monopod is very convenient.
and of course, there is Nikon counterpart: 
). It is important to support a long lens not only to avoid fatigue (these lenses are heavy!), but also to reduce camera shake. At many venues, tripods are not allowed, as they take too much space, but monopods can be used. Sometimes, a monopod can be used as a makeshift stationary camera support in very tight spaces, when it is clamped to some heavy object. I have used it in this way in a research laboratory and also at a sporting arena where tripods were not allowed (by clamping the monopod to advertisement panels that surrounded the pitch).
or using a 
. I tried both methods and found that using a collar is more convenient. In the photo above, Armando has his 
lens attached to a gimbal head. When using a head, it should not be tightened too much, so that the camera can be be turned quickly. An alternative is to attach the lens hood directly to the monopod and tilt the entire system slightly to adjust framing. Since long telephoto lenses have a narrow field of view, small inclinations of the camera result in large changes in the framing. The collar should be kept relatively loose, to be able to quickly change from horizontal to vertical camera orientation. Most telephoto lenses have collars, so monopods are usually sold without a head.
